Every December, a familiar claim resurfaces: Christmas traditions are pagan, Santa Claus has no Christian basis, and Christians should know better than to celebrate either. But history tells a very different story—one that modern critics either ignore or simply do not know.
At the center of the controversy stands a real man: St. Nicholas, a fourth-century Christian bishop who lived during one of the most violent eras of persecution in church history. Born around A.D. 280 in what is now Turkey, Nicholas gave away his inheritance to help the poor—often secretly—long before “Santa” ever became a cultural symbol.
According to historian William Federer, in an exclusive interview with Alex Newman for The Sentinel Report, the tradition of secret gift-giving traces directly to Nicholas’ efforts to rescue desperate families. In one well-documented account, Nicholas secretly provided dowries for three young women whose bankrupt father faced losing them to creditors. “That’s where the tradition of anonymous gift-giving comes from,” Federer explains—not paganism, but Christian charity in action.
Nicholas was no lightweight spiritually, either. He was imprisoned during the Roman persecutions, later released after Christianity was legalized, and attended the Council of Nicaea in A.D. 325—the gathering that settled the foundational Christian doctrine that Jesus Christ is fully God, not merely a created being.
What about “Xmas”? Contrary to popular myths, the “X” is not crossing out Christ. It comes from the Greek letter Chi, the first letter in Christos. Early Christians used it as a sacred abbreviation for Jesus’ name.
Even the Christmas tree has Christian origins. Missionary Boniface famously chopped down a pagan oak dedicated to Thor and pointed to an evergreen instead, teaching converts that its upward shape symbolized the Trinity and its unchanging leaves eternal life in Christ.
The bottom line is simple: Christmas traditions did not emerge from paganism creeping into Christianity. They emerged from Christianity, displacing paganism.
As Federer puts it, Christmas exists to remind us of the central truth of the faith: God sent His Son as the Lamb to take the punishment for sin upon Himself. That is not something Christians should be embarrassed about.
It is something worth celebrating—boldly, joyfully, and without apology.
